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Young bull finishers are being penalised by 40c/kg or up to €180 per head, according to the IFA.
Farmers with young bulls are finding it extremely difficult to sell their stock.
“They are being pushed back and back by the factories and being offered discount prices,” IFA livestock chair Angus Woods said. As a result, top-quality finished animals from the suckler herd are being pushed into overage and overweight conditions.
Woods said the situation is alarming and requires an urgent response from the meat factories and Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed.
He said the “wait and see” approach from the minister is crushing hope and confidence in the sector and undermining the market. “Livestock farmers feel the minister is walking away from the sector,” he said.
ICSA beef chair Edmund Graham says he is “inundated with calls from farmers who are being turned away from factories with O grade bull beef. In the last week, I estimate I have had calls from farmers who have some 2,000 head of Holstein bull beef who cannot find a factory to take them. Teagasc figures do not account for the risk of being caught with bulls going over age and nobody to buy them.”
Graham urged beef farmers to stop buying New Zealand-influenced dairy-bred calves as it is “a futile exercise that will never turn profit for a beef farmer”.
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